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Is English a universal language?
Day sixteen -- Question -- from "loftyD" -- Yes Tienzen there is a universal language, its called English. Answer -- After a three hundred year British Empire and one hundred year of American hegemony (a total of over 400 years), the English should be a true universal language long ago. Today, a very high percentage of non-English speaking people in the world learned one to five years English in their school years; yet, the majority of those people cannot claim that English is their second language with any kind of proficiency. Ave94 said, "It isn't just that English is difficult, it's that they had no reason to maintain fluency. Most people only need one language in their lives, so why keep practicing their 2nd language? Only us language geeks will learn languages without real use for them." Although this is very true, it still cannot hide the fact that English is just a too difficult language to learn. Even for Americans with the English as the first language, 20% of them are factually illiterate and a lot more are semi-illiterate. With the English as it is, even with another 500 years of America hegemony, it will definitely still not be able to make the current situation any better. Fortunately, with the PreBabel, this situation can be changed. In the web page "PreBabel Laws and Theorems" ( http://www.prebabel.info/bab010.htm ), The Theorem 1 states, Theorem 1: With law 1 and law 2, any arbitrary vocabulary type of language will become an easy language to learn (as mother tongue or as a second language) by encoding itself with a closed root word set to create a mnemonic chain. Note: Law 1: Encoding with a closed set of root words, any arbitrary vocabulary type language will be organized into a logically linked linear chain, similar to the amino acids / enzymes / proteins system. Law 2: When every natural language is encoded with a universal set of root words, a true Universal Language emerges. The PB(English) is that the natural English is encoded with the PreBabel root word set. And, PB(Russian), PB(Arabic) or PB(Chinese) can also be constructed in the same manner. The PB(English) is a dialect of the natural English. With the Theorem 1, PB(English) will be a very easy language to learn as a mother tongue or as a second language. That is, by using PB(English), the illiterate rate in "America" will be reduced. Of course, this is a "testable" issue as soon as the construction of the PB(English) is completed. Yet, some theoretical points can be discussed here. 1. During the human evolution, humans have found out that the ability of facial recognition is the most important ability to have, much more than the ability of sound (phonetic) recognition. Thus, the ideograph is easier to be memorized than the phonemes. Any phonetic alphabet language can be easily learned as a first language but could be a very difficult lessons as a second language. 2. Again, during the human evolution, humans have found out the way of economizing the memory energy, by memorizing only the "landmarks", not the entire blob of the surrounding. Logic is a pathway for those landmarks while any arbitrary vocabulary is, in general, a blob without a discernable landmark as a memory anchor. The PreBabel approach uses both ideograph and logic chain as the memory anchors. As we already know, the power of hegemony alone is definitely not enough and is, in fact, useless for creating a universal language. Thus, with the PreBabel approach, it is the only chance for any natural language to become a true universal language under the power of hegemony. This can be achieved with two simple steps. Using English as the example, 1. To construct the PB(English) as soon as possible -- it will reduce the illiterate rate in English speaking countries. Yet, most importantly, English will become an easy language to learn as a second language for all non-English speaking people. 2. To construct the PB(L) for all other natural languages -- This will make all other language speakers learning their own language via PB(L, their own). Then, they can learn PB(English) even faster than the step i. Only when a second language is ten or one hundred times easier than a person's "first" language, then that second language can be guaranteed a chance to become a true universal language. Can this be possible? Please visit http://www.chinese-word-roots.org/nparadi.htm If that language is supported by a political hegemony, it will be guaranteed 100% chance to be a universal language. When one is on the throne, it can be very difficult un-seated by others even though the other is a much better one. For English, the time is about running out. The traditional Chinese word system is, now, already 100% encoded with the PB set. China has discovered this fact, and she is about to go back to it from the current simplified system. By then, the Chinese language will become the easiest language to learn in the whole world. For English, there is still a chance to fight for the throne, 10 more years, but no more. Question -- from "sangi39" -- ..., but a proposal is currently gaining support in China to remove the simplified script due to the higher number of merged characters, and in a language with a lot of homophones merging in the script is seen as a bad idea by some. Also, you still haven't addressed th issue of a natural population, which would be needed for this language to actually have a start point for some momentous take-off to becoming an international language, which is actually crucial in the discussion I made above, i.e. a natural PB-speaking population, using PB as a first language, is necessary for the development of PB as a universal language, Answer -- By 2020, China will complete her task of going back to the traditional system. The PreBabel (Chinese) will have 1.5 billion speakers by then. Signature -- PreBabel is the true universal language, it is available at http://www.prebabel.info